5 MARCH 1921, Page 21

THE ESSENTIALS OF MYSTICISM* " ATronszvs are for the world

and the world is for attorneys," says Walter Bagehot,' and the world which cherishes attorneys offers no abiding home to mystics. It may pass them by with a vague deference as respectable but unpractical persons ; or, more commonly, it may look upon them suspiciously as charlatans disguising visionary nonsense in outbursts of windy grandilo- quence. The earlier chapters of Mrs. Moore's book are intended to dispel this prejudice by showing that there is a coherent unity in the mysticism of all peoples and all times, however much it may be concealed by the idioms of individual expression. As mystics are essentially solitary explorers of the unknown (although many of them, and those not the least lofty or inspired, have been guided by thertracks of their predecessors at the outset of their journey), Mrs. Moore thinks that if there is substantial agreement amongst them in their discoveries, we have sound presumptive evidence of the existence of a corresponding reality. This agreement she then sets herself to discover beneath the cloud of figure and type by which in each case it is necessarily obscured. We say " necessarily," for as the mystic deals with transcendental subjects he cannot possibly express himself clearly in the exact terms of the everyday world, or indeed other- wise than in the approximations of imagery. There is no doubt that the author finds the consensus for which she seeks ; but

whether it testifies to what we may call an objective reality beyond, or only to a subjective truth common to mystics,

appears to us to remain open to argument.

In addition to the analytic sections, the book contains some thoughtful appreciations of individual mystics, ancient, mediaeval, and modern; and there is a notably fine chapter on the functions of will, intellect, and feeling in prayer from which we make a short extract :—

" All mediaeval writers on prayer take it as a matter of course that meditation' comes before orison' ; and meditation is simply the art of thinking steadily and methodically about spiritual things. So, too, the most modern psychologists assure us that instinctive emotion does its best work when it acts in harmony with our reasoning powers. . . . It is in fact obvious —once we consider the matter in a practical light—that we must form some conception of the supernal intercourse which we are going to attempt, and of the parties to it ; though if our prayer be real, that conception will soon be transcended. . . . It seems necessary to insist on this point, because so much is said now, and no doubt rightly said, about the non-intellectual and supremely intuitional nature of the spiritual life ; with the result that some people begin to think it their duty to cultivate a kind of pious imbecility. There is a notion in the air that when man turns to God he ought to leave his brains behind him.'